


The Key

by AmazingGraceless



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Ilvermorny, Polyglot, mother-daughter troubles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:02:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28051362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmazingGraceless/pseuds/AmazingGraceless
Summary: Esme Calderon is a polyglot like her professor mother. Esme is afraid that’s not the only thing she and her mother have in common.





	The Key

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was to write a character who speaks another language.

Esme Calderon thought it was rather overrated, being the daughter of an Ilvermorny professor. She grew up first on the island off of the coast of St. Augustine, where the first European witches and wizards had made their home in America. For the first several years of her life, she would be left alone with her father for several months at a time, not understanding why her mother always left when the sea breeze was just a little bit colder and the days started shrinking.

Of course, on the Isla de Brujas, there was enough wonder and whimsy to distract a little girl from her frequently-missing mother. It was a city only for witches and wizards, even as technology and society advanced. Considered a sort of Disney world for all the magical people that lived beneath the surface of the No-Maj world, Esme observed all sorts of strange people. She heard all sorts of dialects— Gobbeldygook and Mermish and Troll— and Spanish, naturally.

It did not surprise her father when she brought elements of these languages home with her, in phrases and small expressions— a patchwork of languages much like her favorite quilt that her abuela had crafted for her as a present when she had done her first act of magic four days after she was born.

"You're like you máma," Matteo Calderon would tell his daughter after hearing her spout off some Mermish turn-of-phrase or a curse in some higher form of Elvish. "You know how to learn the languages quickly, like her."

"She knows how to speak like I do?" Esme asked, her big brown eyes staring up at the matching pair she had inherited.

"Yes, it's what she does when she goes away for a long period of time," Matteo explained. "She goes to a big castle in Massachusetts, a state very far north. She teaches many witches and wizards, a little older than you, how to speak languages like that of the centaurs, or the ancient runes— and naturally, some French and Spanish for the parents. You have a gift, hija. Your pápa only managed the Spanish and English, I'm afraid."

From then on, Esme had dreamed of attending Ilvermorny and possibly learning more from the various students there— but she did not understand yet what it meant, to be the daughter of one of the professors. Especially one so prestigious and infamous as Iliana Luna Calderon.

Esme first became aware of it when she entered the Sorting Hall on the first day of school. The moonlight shone through the skylight, drowning out all of the candles and other lights around the tower and the seven levels above her. Seven years of students stared up at her from above as she stood plainly in the light, awaiting the judgement of the carvings surrounding her in the room.

"Is that Profesora Calderon's daughter?"

"Poor girl, having a mom as strict as her—"

"Do you think she's such a goody-goody?"

"She'd have to be, to survive that witch—"

In overhearing for the first time this second side to her mother, one that Esme never had the chance to see, she nearly missed the Horned Serpent's gem in its forehead lighting up. She had to be reminded by Headmaster Fontaine to keep moving so that others in her year might get their turn to be Sorted.

Her ears had been red as she stumbled along into the Wand Hall to be selected for her wand. But the whispers didn't leave. All she could wonder was if it was true, if her mother was so awful— and what that would mean for her daughter.

In time, she grew to learn the truth. While Esme never took her mother's classes directly, as it was against the administrative policy for children to take their parents' classes, she peeked in the dusty windows to see her mother's lectures, and could hear her berating her students through the stone walls despite their alleged sound-proofing.

While Esme had been lucky enough to cobble enough from several languages to test out of her language requirements, others in her grade had not been. Thus, they were forced to take the class of Profesora Calderon and Esme was shunned.

At first, it hurt. Esme wrote back many letters to her father, but he was painfully diplomatic. She spent more and more time in the library, reading various books on languages. She knew it wasn't the most efficient way to learn— that happened during her Christmas breaks and summer vacations.

But it was something to do, a way to occupy herself. She rather liked how the languages were crafted, how each had such different rules of grammar and tenses, how they each had a different feeling. Higher Elvish made her feel dainty and royal, like the versions she saw in TV or movies. Troll felt deep and powerful, like a storm rumbled inside of her belly. And with it, Esme found herself learning more about culture and the many worlds that these languages acted as keys to.

She could only hope that one of those worlds, at least, would take her away from her mother's shadow.

It wasn't just her mother's strictness that made life more difficult for Esme than was necessary. The other professors expected more from Esme. She found herself slowly putting up a mask around others, striking a poise that felt all too familiar and all too uncomfortable. Just like her mother. She was excelling and meeting the standards that every teacher announced to her at the beginning of every class or when handing out every test. But it was only because she had to, she kept telling herself. It was because she was expected to, and there were no other options.

Esme sighed, glancing out of the window. She'd had enough of the moping about her schoolhood. This was her fifth-year. She would still have to work for her good grades, and it would be good to keep her nose clean. But perhaps it was time to find and adventure of her own. She looked back to one of her linguistics books, and then to an atlas open on the table. Maybe one of her languages would be the key.


End file.
